Día de los Muertos
and Egyptian Pyramids
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
Basile Morin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The lotuses in the pond,
Just as they are, unplucked:
The Festival of the Dead.
~ Basho
This night the Buddha entered Nirvana;
It was like firewood burned utterly away.
The oldest tenets, atavistic ones,
Like spirits in all things, yes, even rocks
And rivers, spirits in red moons and suns,
The hovering of eagles and of hawks
Above the shamans in their caves belong
And always have belonged in hearts as dark
As human sacrifice. The Buddha’s song
Unsung, a candle lighting from a spark,
An animistic chant among the oaks,
A Brahman’s rites become a oneness when
The transmigration of the soul evokes
Them all. They come together as in Zen
And well beyond it. In their wide-flung reach
A unity is what they, mumbling, teach.